THE UNBROKEN

Recovery was its own kind of hell.

Elena often wondered if it would have been kinder to die.

There was no peace in survival. No relief in waking each day. The pain was not just in her flesh, it was in every silence, every breath she had to take without hearing Niegal's laugh. Without the crackle of stormlight in her veins. Without the gods she had once praised with song.

Most days, she cradled her daughter, whispering nothings into the girl's hair. Esperanza, by some miracle, had healed faster. But even she had grown quieter. She no longer reached for floating motes of magic. No longer hummed to herself before sleep. Her eyes held something ancient now. Something that should not belong to a child.

They had both come back from death.

But the magic hadn't.

Elena's once-glowing scars were pale and still. Her mana was gone. Her storm silenced. And her sight-

Faint shadows at best. In the brightest rooms, she could make out a shape. A flicker. Everything else was dark and swimming.

It was returning slowly.

But not fast enough.

The fire that had once made her feared and worshipped had become embers buried in ash.

She didn't pray anymore.

Didn't sing the names of the gods.

Didn't call on Yidali or Guabancex.

What was the point?

They had taken him from her.

And without Niegal… she was already dead.

Only Esperanza kept her breathing.

Only her child's fragile hands pulling at her sleeve each morning, asking "Mami?" kept her grounded in this broken, magicless world.

No words, no comforts, no old songs of hope from the village folk could reach her.

Until…

La Señora Behike came one dawn with her black robes and gentle eyes and said simply:

"Come. There is one place left for us."

Elena didn't ask where.

She didn't care.

Nothing mattered now but the small girl in her arms, and the memory of a man she could no longer feel.

So she followed.

Through mossy woods and moonlit stone paths, down into a ravine veiled by waterfalls and mist. There, nestled in a sacred glen, sat the Wellspring of Coabey. A pool said to be touched by the first woman, the first ancestor, and guarded by the bones of ancient jaguars.

Elena hesitated at the edge.

The water shimmered, strangely warm.

She stepped in.

Her legs gave out, but the Behike caught her, cradling her gently. She floated.

Like a dead woman in ritual.

"Let go," the Behike whispered. "Let the water take your sorrow."

Her voice was old, but not tired.

Then, smoke.

The smell of cohobe- the sacred ash.

Elena coughed, inhaling the spirit.

The world twisted.

She blinked.

Sunlight kissed her cheeks. Soft sand beneath her palms.

Her skin was whole.

Her scars, gone.

Her breath, easy.

For the first time in weeks: she could see.

Light danced on the waves. Sea birds called overhead.

And then she saw him.

Niegal.

He stood on the beach, barely upright. His body battered, covered in lash marks, his face sunken, barely recognizable.

But it was him.

Her lion.

Elena's heart shattered and bloomed all at once.

She wanted to run to him, to throw herself into his arms, to scream and cry and beg him not to fade. But her feet wouldn't move.

Still, she smiled.

Through her tears she reached out her hand.

"I will always find you," she whispered.

He raised his arm toward her, his fingers trembling. His eyes wide with disbelief. A spark of recognition. Of love. Of hope.

"Always," she swore.

And then the tide rose, cold and hungry.

It swallowed her whole.

She awoke choking, coughing up water and ash, body trembling as she floated in the sacred spring.

The world was a blur, her vision swimming- but she could see.

Hazy outlines. Faces half-formed. Trees moving like shadows underwater. Pain still pulsed beneath her skin, but it was real. Tangible.

The Behike helped her sit upright.

Her smile was all teeth and moonlight.

"So, mija. What do you say? You have no magic… but we can still fight. Are you ready?"

Elena sat, the water slick on her bare skin, hair clinging to her back. She looked down at her hands—scarred, steady. And clutched in them? The Blade of Boinyanel, weeping rain into the spring waters, shaking in thunderous resolve.

The spark wasn't there.

But something stronger was.

Determination.

She nodded, her jaw clenched, eyes wet but burning with grief and fury.

"They'll pay for what they've done to us," she whispered.

She stood, clutching the magical machete in her hand with white knuckles.

Let the water drip from her like holy oil. Let the ghosts of the gods tremble.

She would rise as she was. Wounded, sightless, powerless.

And she would become something they never saw coming.

She turned toward the horizon, a whisper on her lips.

"I'll always find you, Niegal. Just hang on."